81 Years of “Boring”
My family enjoyed a Shelton family tradition last night: Nutty Bars in Okoboji. Okoboji is one of our favorite places in the world, and Nutty Bars are woven into the fabric of the Okoboji experience. To give you some context, Nutty Bars are small blocks of vanilla Blue Bunny ice cream with a wooden stick inserted, dunked in chocolate, and rolled in crushed peanuts. Simple, classic, delicious.
Finn’s very first bite of Nutty Bar, age 3.
I was recently talking to a fellow business owner about our anticipation of enjoying some Nutty Bars. “Their business is boring. They’ve literally been doing the same thing for 100 years. They haven’t innovated once.” He scoffed at the Nutty Bar stand……he might as well have insulted my sons!
81 years, actually. They’ve been doing the same thing for 81 years….since 1945. In a world where businesses come and go as often as we change underwear, 81 years is pretty amazing. And they don’t seem to be slowing down. Every time I’m there, hundreds of people are coming or going. I wish I knew more about their business, but they no doubt sell thousands of Nutty Bars each day.
The Nutty Bar stand practices something vitally important in business. They simply offer a consistently excellent product for an attractive price. Simple, consistent, excellent, and more valuable than it costs…..all four components are important. They’ve created a machine that puts smiles on hundreds of thousands of people’s faces, and I suspect they’ve been handsomely rewarded financially for that.
We don’t have to come up with a world-changing idea to be successful or impactful. Instead, we just need to find a way to implement the Nutty Bar formula in our own lives. Stay simple, be excellent, remain consistent, and add more value than we charge. Whether we’re business owners, self-employed, or employees, these values are the building blocks for a fruitful and impactful journey.
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